Monday, December 3, 2007

DPNs and a Finished Object

Some thoughts on DPNs. I've never used DPNs successfully before my Snowflake Gloves. Keeping track of the needles seemed tricky, the yarn got tangled around them. People seemed to use them, however, and create lots of lovely things, so I tried again, and made a discovery.

Suddenly, I was zipping around the needle-round, without any problems. It was due, entirely, to the needles coincidentally falling into a particular conformation. I think they did it just to see if I'd notice. I did - and remember - the needles do not want to work with you. You must trick them into behaving, thus:

See? As you knit around "clockwise", the left end of the needle in your left hand should be on top of the right end of whichever needle is coming up next. This allows for smooth transition between needles, and the yarn never gets caught on the old needle as you switch it out. This may seem incredbly basic to some (most? all?) of you, but it took me a while to stumble upon it. And if you *haven't* realized it (and thus avoided DPNs as I did), you're having the same lightbulb moment I had.

I made mine longer than the pattern called for (my wrists are what gets cold!). The second one worked better than the first one, as is usually the case with a new pattern - or so I've been led to understand, as I've never finished TWO of anything that was a set before! They're cushy, too, and fit over my turtleneck sleeves and watch, which is less awkward than having to fit *under*. May try to design my own pair of glovelets one of these days!

Since I forgot the SD card with all the New York photos (along with my Metro card and MONEY), we'll save the trip for tomorrow. But it was fun, and if you caught the Radio City Special on TV Saturday night, then you saw much of what I did!